Lost and Found
by KADH
Summary: Despite what all the fairy tales may say, the wedding is never the end, only the beginning, of the story.     Part of the Marriage of True Minds sequence. Takes place during Grissom and Sara's honeymoon, circa late winter/early spring 2009.
1. One

**Lost and Found**

Despite what all the fairy tales may say, the wedding is never the end, only the beginning, of the story.

_Part of the_ Marriage of True Minds _sequence. Takes place during Grissom and Sara's honeymoon, circa late winter/early spring 2009._

_For JW, now Mrs. E, upon the occasion of her marriage - with apologies for the unsurprising lateness (of course one shouldn't be reading fanfic during one's honeymoon anyway) but with the very best of wishes always, and much joy to you both._

xxxxxxx**  
><strong>

**One**

"True love stories never have endings," Richard Bach

xxxxxxx

"Will you?"

Sara turned to indicate the long line of pearl buttons running down the back of her simple, yet elegant wedding dress.

She and Grissom had just returned from one last leisurely stroll along the sands. Unable as they'd been to resist the waves' rhythmic rush and retreat, the heady ocean air or pretty star-strewn moonlit sky, they'd lingered hand-in-hand along the shore with all the practiced ease of regular holidaymakers, despite this being in truth, not only their honeymoon, but also their first real vacation together.

"I swear," Grissom began, his breath hot on her neck, "you chose all these buttons on purpose."

Glancing back at him, Sara's eyes sparkled _Perhaps._

His only rejoinder was to take his time with said buttons.

After what felt like an inordinately long interval – at least by Sara's reckoning - and him having only managed to make it halfway through them, she let out a sigh of "Gil," though more fond than actually reproving.

Normally, his blithe _Yes, dear?_ would have made her smirk and shake her head, but his lips were close, so close, they practically hummed against that sensitive spot just beneath her ear, that in the end, all Sara could manage was to inhale in reply.

Albeit by the time he finally slid the last fastener free, she had regained enough presence of mind to turn, take his face into her hands and render him the one breathless.

Long after, her left hand remained there, resting on his cheek, her thumb brushing against his skin in that same tender way it had the first time she'd touched him, really touched him, out there in that alleyway all those years ago.

And it was Grissom's turn to sigh and close his eyes before he pressed a kiss into her palm. However, it was the not quite absent brush of his thumb along the simple gold band she now wore which caused his wife to murmur, "We actually did it."

While her words bespoke more of a sense of hard-won contentment than amazement, and he knew it, Grissom laughed, "Regret it already?"

Opting for a tease of her own, Sara replied, "Isn't it a little early to be asking that question?"

"After only a couple of hours? Probably. But you still haven't answered it, Sara."

"Not at all. You?"

His _No_ was as equally honest and earnest as her own.

Their solemnity didn't last long, however; the occasion simply wouldn't allow for it.

From above the whisper of the faintly blue-blushed cream-colored fabric being carefully eased over her head, came Sara's chuckle of "Although I don't envy you having to tell Catherine."

"Refresh my memory," Grissom said, intently eyeing her as she went to drape her dress over a chair. "How exactly did this become _my_ job again?"

Utterly nonchalant, she rejoined, "You were the one who wrote her saying we _had some news_. And we both know, Gil, it's not like you not to finish what you start."

Grissom made no reply to this, more keen as he was at that moment at enjoying the sight of her barefoot and clad as she now was only in a short silk slip.

And unsurprisingly found himself - and not for the first time that night - absolutely dumbstruck.

_Beautiful,_ he wanted to murmur. _So beautiful_.

But he couldn't quite heave his heart into his mouth. Or find words at all. Which didn't surprise him either. Sara did that to him. All the time.

It wasn't until he finally registered her attempts to rub warmth back into her bare arms - the evening air brisk as it frequently was, counter to the widely and mistakenly held belief that the rainforest, like the desert, never cooled - that Grissom was jolted out of his appreciative reverie and able to ask as pathetically obvious as the answer was, "Cold?"

She shrugged. "A little."

"I have a remedy for that."

Sara, thinking he might steer her towards the bed, instead found herself suddenly alone in the middle of the room, victim of yet another prototypical, yet no less baffling, Gil Grissom disappearing act. However nonplussed, she knew if she waited long enough an explanation would eventually be forthcoming. Eventually. And it was.

Over the sounds of him rummaging through his satchel came his rather sheepish admission. "I almost forgot. Meant to give it to you earlier."

_Forgot what?_ She wondered, but it was "It's not like you to be forgetful," that she called after him, amused and still more than a little bemused all at once.

Her puzzlement didn't last long, for he soon returned, a lumpy though neatly wrapped parcel in hand, done up as she was tickled to see in that simple brown paper which Grissom for some inexplicable reason tended to favor and Sara rather secretly cherished its unpretentious simplicity.

"I was," he offered, "a little -"

"Preoccupied?" she supplied in the start of an old and well-worn exchange between them.

"_Distracted_."

And he had been, riveted to the spot at the first sight of her descending the narrow steps in her wedding gown. Been struck speechless then, too. Which hadn't exactly gone unnoticed at the time. Except Sara, for her part, had rather regarded his mute admiration as the highest compliment he could have paid her.

He extended the package to her. "Forgive me one last tradition: nuptial gift."

"Victorian?" Sara asked, that having been the original source, or so she'd been informed, of the twin sprays of orange blossoms he'd given her to wear in her hair in lieu of a bouquet.

"Slightly older than that."

Cognizant that there had to be more, she waited and was rewarded with one of Grissom's patented one-word expositions.

"Entomic."

_Insects_. Of course.

She grinned. "A lot older you mean."

As in millennia older. Heck ants and other insects had been waging war, raising crops, tending livestock and living in intricately ruled cooperative societies 50 million years before human beings arrived on the scene to attempt, albeit not always that successfully, to do the same.

But only Grissom would be thinking bugs now. Sara doubted he ever actually stopped. It was strangely enough one of his more endearing traits.

So she beamed, "I love you," and planted an affectionate kiss on his cheek.

One which was cut short by her having abruptly recollected her husband having once, and probably more than once now that she thought about it, described in great detail how the males of many arachnid and mantid species used nuptial gifts such as nutritive food items or even seemingly useless baubles like clusters of blown bubbles to divert and keep their mates occupied during sex so that they might live to copulate another day.

"I hope your rationale differs," she sighed. "I mean you really aren't that worried I might bite your head off and eat it if you didn't?"

"Just open it, dear."

Tentatively, Sara peeled the paper aside. And gasped.

First her eyes and then her fingertips traced the outlines of a rabble of brilliantly blue morphos frolicking amongst the cream-colored blossoms adorning the intricately woven shawl.

That it's coloration so closely matched the dress she'd chosen to wear couldn't be coincidence.

"You knew."

"I had help is all." Then fingering one of the thin straps to her slip in a way very, very familiar, he added in a tender tone of his own, "I couldn't resist."

The gesture and its reference didn't escape her. Knowing his selection had just as much to do with his recollecting the precise color of the dress she'd worn for at least part of their first date rendered her murmur of "It's beautiful," even more breathy.

"And useful."

"Oh?"

He proceeded to unfurl it with a flourish and drape it about her shoulders before employing the ends to tug her towards him.

"Aren't you clever?"

_Naturally_, his smug grin intimated.

Which only made her laugh. "It's not like you to be cocky, Gil."

But she kissed him anyway.

And they only broke away for breath.

When they finally did, Sara stammered, still slightly short of breath herself, "I... I uh... Have something for you, too, actually. Turns out great minds really do think alike. Well," she hurriedly amended, "Not _entirely_ alike."

For even after all her months cataloging insect specimens for Dr. Velazquez's biodiversity census or those years working and living with Gil Grissom, entomologist extraordinaire, she didn't quite have bugs on the brain as much as her now husband did.

But turn about being as it frequently was, fair play, Grissom's eyes went wide at the contents of her gift: an obviously well-loved and much-thumbed antique gilt-edged black leather-bound volume, the title on the spine worn almost into illegibility, but the cover and front board still vibrant with the graphic depiction of a boat being capsized by an angry great white whale.

"How did you manage-?" he asked, not unsurprisingly, as the one thing there was definitely a dearth of in Costa Rica were books in English.

"Weren't you the one who said the _knowledge of how something is done inevitably spoils the magic of the thing?_"

When Grissom simply waited for her to actually answer, persevering in peering at her in that intent way of his, she said, "The Internet, where else? But I do distinctly recall you once saying you wanted a chance to read it again."

"I did," he replied with a fond smile of his own, thinking back to that night when the two of them had returned from Desert Palms simultaneously drained and elated to find out that Brass was going to be fine, just fine. They – or he mostly - had spoken about death and dying and all the things he wanted to do before his proverbial time was up.

He'd already gotten to go back to the rainforest one more time. And now this. The international chess tournaments could wait. And since then, he'd come up with a few more things he hoped to do, foremost of all, sharing the rest of his life – however long it lasted, whatever it might hold and wherever it might take him - with the woman who was now his wife.

He returned the thick tome to Sara. "Will you do the honors?"

"_Me?_ Right here, right now?"

"Why not?" he asked, taking her hand to tug her toward the small settee where they sat snuggled up close, the book propped open on her lap; her head resting on his shoulder. Grissom's arm fitted around her, his fingers dallying for a while in her curls before slipping beneath her shawl and along her bare arm, more than a little distractingly, though when he asked, Sara was rather insistent that he not stop.

That this was how he wished to occupy the remainder of their evening, she knew she really shouldn't be surprised. They may have been married no more than a handful of hours, but Sara already knew this about her husband: Grissom never rushed anything. That and his idea of lovemaking went well beyond sex.

And so she began to read:

"'Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind

how long precisely—having little or no money

in my purse, and nothing particular to interest

me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little

and see the watery part of the world. It is a way

I have of driving off the spleen and regulating

the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing

grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp,

drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find

myself involuntarily pausing before coffin

warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every

funeral I meet; and especially whenever my

hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it

requires a strong moral principle to prevent me

from deliberately stepping into the street, and

methodically knocking people's hats off—then,

I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.'"

xxxxxxx

"'I turned in, and never slept better in my life.'"

Sara paused at the end of the fourth chapter and was about to turn the page to begin the next, when her husband reached over to nudge the book closed.

"On that note -"

"Does this mean you think _I'm_ dull as a speaker?" she chuckled.

Setting the book aside, he shook his head.

Although there was no mistaking his intentions when in a distinctly husky rasp he murmured, "Bed," into his wife's ear; and Sara, certain he was not suggesting sleep, needed no further explanations or inducements.


	2. Two

**Two**

"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech

when words become superfluous," Ingrid Bergman

xxxxxxx

"_Gil _-"

Sara caught him up just shy of the bed and at his resultant confusion mouthed_ Buttons_, eyeing the ones of the Oxford he'd donned sans tie for their wedding.

This disparity in dress - or more apropos in this case, undress - Grissom, with none of his earlier lingering lassitude, speedily set to rectify, although apparently, not quite quickly enough for his wife.

In one of her rather rare as of late demonstrations of impatience, Sara not entirely gently worked his shirttail free from his trousers and started in on them from the bottom.

They met in the middle laughing.

And kissing.

That French blue hued button-down of his might have been her favorite - it ever heightening the brilliance of his already bright eyes - but that didn't keep it from being hastily and haphazardly discarded. The thin white cotton undershirt beneath soon followed suit.

And her hands were on him, the heat and feel of them causing Grissom to fumble clumsily with his belt. Eventually, he managed to free it and kissing him even more long and longingly, Sara helped him work his pants over his hips until they pooled at his feet. Next and with very little ceremony and certainly no protest on either of their parts, his boxers succeeded them.

By now they were both breathless from laughing and desire. However, it was the former rather than the latter, which managed to rouse Hank, who hadn't previously registered their initial return to the cabin, both busily and contentedly snoring as he'd been in the middle of the mattress.

After weeks of being consigned to cramped corners of cots or uncomfortably hard patches of earth, the boxer had opted to absent himself from his masters' moonlit walk, preferring instead to indulge in the rather rare luxury of having an entire bed to himself. Accordingly, he didn't much take to being woken; to being evicted even less. Nonetheless, while he may have fixed the two of them with a dour, disapproving glare, Hank had long ago learned that pouting and protests were pointless, and therefore, without much further prodding, he clambered down and lumbered off to find a quieter spot to resume his snooze unmolested. His humans were far too lost and preoccupied in each other much to notice.

For Grissom and Sara, once the hurried tussle of undressing was done, the anxious ardor gave way, as it so often did, to unhurried tenderness. There were just some things in life meant to be slowly savored and long lingered over. Lovemaking being the foremost amongst them.

And besides, that night they didn't have to worry about remembering to forget to turn off the radio or to take care to be extra quiet. Hank was already fast asleep again or feigning indifference, so apart from the hum and buzz and creep of the insects and other creatures of the dark, they had the low lantern light all to themselves.

Easing her husband onto his back, Sara held him there, her hands, her breath, her mouth hot on his neck, his shoulders, eliciting those low, long, breathy moans of the sort which served more to encourage than arrest, particularly as they were one of those sounds she knew meant for her ears and her ears alone.

His wife having begun to trail feather-light kisses down his chest and even lower, Grissom luxuriated in the attention, affectionate, enervating and enticing as it was all at once, while Sara took pleasure in the feel of him and the way his body readily responded to her touch. So it wasn't until he, somewhere between gasp and breathlessness, pleaded, "_Sara_-" that she checked her ministrations and explorations.

But he wasn't asking her to stop. No, he wanted more, more of her. He couldn't get enough. Never could. He hoped he never would.

Feeling much the same, Sara didn't protest when he drew her up and kissed her hard and hungrily. She did, however, give him an admonitory sigh when he over-lingered along the sensitive underside of her neck where once several years ago he'd completely inadvertently - or so he would always maintain and would always continue to maintain - given her an impossible not to notice hickey. Thankfully, it had been January and the wearing of long, thin scarves even indoors had been fashionable at the time.

But here and now in that dim lantern light, the two lost in heady open-mouthed kisses, Grissom's fingers intertwined in her hair, jostling free the clusters of orange blossoms behind her ears. The liberated petals rained onto her shoulders, drifted onto the sheets and when crushed beneath their bodies, released an intoxicating redolence into the air.

But it was the scent and taste and touch and sound of Sara that ultimately overcame him.

Wanting her nearer, his palms ran along her still silk clad sides and while the slip - a profound departure from her usual simple cotton camisole and pajama pants sleep ensemble of the kind which Grissom had always found incredibly sexy despite its casual simplicity - may have been pretty, its soft, smooth suppleness wasn't the sensation he was seeking. Rather, he craved the warm familiarity of the body beneath, the one he knew and loved so well.

It was Sara who was the one certainly overdressed now.

Through the thin fabric he nuzzled the slight curve of her belly before beginning to inch it upwards, lavishing attention to each bit of skin he exposed. But not solely sold on seduction, and knowing right well that his neatly cropped beard tickled in certain places, Grissom accordingly attacked them with relish. For he loved the lilt of her laughter amidst her moans almost as much as the shudders and sighs.

Once Sara had helped him work the last of the fabric over her head, Grissom paused, not for breath, as the sight of her - all of her like this, even in that faint light - more took, than inspired breath, but to admire.

And Sara might have colored at this, except now his hands were on her. They were after all the weeks of manual fieldwork, far more coarse and calloused than they'd ever been back in Vegas, but that didn't make them any less heaven on her skin. She certainly savored his touch, his lips, his breath. The physical pleasure of it all went without saying.

Yet the two of them couldn't be close enough; touching enough.

The part of her still rational and remembering recalled her husband insisting how sex was about human connection. And with him it was. A closeness, a connection which lay far beyond desire and passion, beyond the purely physical; one she had never known with anyone else ever and thus one she prized and cherished accordingly.

Feeling very much the same, Grissom pulled his wife to him, murmuring into her hair before she caught him up in another adamant kiss and his lips and breath were otherwise and most blissfully engaged.

Before long, nothing separated them.


	3. Three

**Three**

**CASSIE JAMES:**

...I mean, you never know what you need until you find it.

**GRISSOM: **

Or until you lose it.

...

**CASSIE JAMES:**

... I mean, you know, y-y-you-you can pick through a million

lives and never have one of your own.

**GRISSOM:**

Looking for things, analyzing them ... trying to figure out the world

- that's a life.

**CASSIE JAMES: **

You never know what you need until you find it. And the next

thing I find it might be the thing that changes everything.

**GRISSOM: **

What will you do when you find it?

**CASSIE JAMES: **

Sleep ... the most perfect sleep.

- Episode 223: The Hunger Artist

xxxxxxx

Grissom bolted awake.

Initially, he was unsure what precisely had woken him. For he'd been very contently curled up alongside his wife, the two of them as yet fast asleep, enjoying the unaccustomed luxury of what was for them, up before dawn as they usually were for work, a late lie in.

Until it came again: that drawn out, thundering guttural rumble growl of a roar which seemed far more apropos to the savannas of Africa than to the vast verdant canopies of Costa Rica. But there was no mistaking the sound or the source. Only one animal on the planet was capable of making that profound of a racket. Locals called them_ el mono aullador,_ scientists, _Alouatta palliata, _but they were best known by their apt (if somewhat of an understatement) of a common name: Howler Monkeys.

From distances exceeding three miles their diurnal dawn and dusk heralding could be heard. Though judging by the volume of this particular troop's recital, they were likely far, far nearer, probably less than half a mile away. Which happened to be a little too close for Grissom's liking.

It wasn't that he had a thing against primates or had grown immune to the wonder of encountering the creatures in the wild, he just preferred for them to stay heard rather than seen, particularly after he'd discovered firsthand during his first week in camp that Howlers had a nasty predilection for urinating and defecating on any humans they came into contact with. It was not an experience he was in all that much of a hurry to repeat. Ever.

How any one could sleep through the males' resonating barks, grunts, screeches, and cackles, he had no clue. In his opinion, the din was fit to wake the dead. Although apparently neither Sara nor Hank. Both were still sound asleep and snoring, which of the two louder, Grissom couldn't - and wouldn't - say.

Besides, the snoring, at least in Sara's case, presaged an undisturbed sleep, a state her husband was always heartened to find her in, knowing as he did, how for nearly all of her life, she had struggled between the twin quandaries of insomnia and sleep's attendant nightmares. And understandably so. But she'd been sleeping better ever since he'd come. She had confessed as much to him on more than one occasion, though she needn't have; he'd happily observed it for himself.

As tempting as it was, and it was that morning, their first morning as husband and wife, to linger there in bed with her, Grissom knew from the depth of her breathing, she would be asleep for some time yet. Which provided him the perfect opportunity to finally make good on something he'd been wanting to do for quite some time - years even - but had not quite yet ever managed to accomplish: bring Sara breakfast in bed.

He'd have to improvise a little, this he already knew. But then Gil Grissom had always possessed a quick and ready mind for problem solving. Besides, Sara served as the perfect inducement.

So Grissom, very much not wishing to wake her, very carefully extricated himself, still intimately intertwined as they both were from the night before. Apart from a wholly unintelligible murmur, Sara scarcely stirred. Not wanting to disturb her by rifling through his satchel for clean clothes, he gathered up the now rumpled remains of what he had worn the night before and quickly and quietly dressed.

For while the howlers might not wake her, that didn't mean his puttering about the small cabin wouldn't. She was weird like that. Though Grissom supposed it was no different from his being able to sleep through the dog barking, sirens blaring, planes whizzing, traffic rumbling, construction thumping and people, people everywhere that made up the cacophony of Las Vegas. No wonder the place never slept.

Tiptoeing out of the cabin so softly not even a sure to be hungry Hank had heard, Grissom stole off towards the ground's open-air communal kitchen.

xxxxxxx

A little over an hour later he returned, heavily-laden tray in hand to find his wife had taken advantage of his absence to sprawl even further across the bed, so that she was now currently occupying more than three-quarters of the mattress. Not particularly a surprising or unusual occurrence. Attempt to deny it as much as she tried, for as long as he had been in a position to be in the know, Grissom had known Sara to be a habitual bed hog.

What she hadn't done that morning was manage to take much of the sheet with her, which left her far more exposed than covered.

Slowly, his eyes trailed up the long, smooth slope of her spine, bare backed as she was, took in the contrast of suntanned skin and the pale creaminess of what her clothes normally covered. There was the slight swell of a breast, the heightened smattering of freckles along her shoulders and neck, the way her mass of mussed, sun-honeyed hair splayed across one cheek and haloed against the pillow.

Perhaps it was a good thing he'd possessed the forethought to deposit the breakfast tray on a table first thing when he'd come in. The resulting crash of china would not have been his first choice of a way to wake Sara.

For his breath caught. And he just stood there staring. Much as he had that first afternoon he'd shown up in the rainforest, when he'd stopped short, speechless, breathless at the sight of her preoccupied as she'd been in trying to capture on film the latest antics of George, the camp's quasi-resident capuchin.

Strange, now that he thought about it, he'd been similarly engaged on her first day in Vegas, when she'd tracked him down to the scene of a suspect death by leaping at the old Hotel Monaco. But then history did have a habit of doing that: repeating itself in the most unexpected of ways.

Even now, more than a decade later, Grissom wasn't quite certain what his full intentions had been when he'd asked Sara Sidle to fly out to help investigate the murder of Holly Gribbs. Yes, they'd been short staffed. Yes, he wanted someone other than IA handling it. Yes, she was someone he could trust. But there had been more to it than that. What precisely, he hadn't allowed himself to think then or even years later. Though if someone would have told him back then that they'd end up husband and wife, he would have scoffed at the absurdity of the suggestion.

And yet they were.

He even had the ring to prove it, the mate to the one he had slipped onto her hand the night before, the one he was, despite his not registering his doing it, absently fingering.

That was what had rendered him so thoroughly dumbstruck at the sight of her that morning. For it wasn't as if he hadn't come across Sara wearing far, far less countless times before. But it was the first time he'd encountered her as such as his wife.

He hadn't thought it would make a difference: their getting - being - married. Yet it did. How, after not even quite a full day, he couldn't pinpoint exactly. But it did.

Even if it was still a little hard to believe. Hard to believe that the woman lying before him, the one whom he had loved for so long (though not always so well), the one who had become over the years, his best friend, partner, companion and lover (no matter how horribly sordid certain people made that word sound. He loved her; she loved him. They made love. What other than _lovers_ could they have been?) was now his wife.

Grissom wasn't good with feelings. Not usually. Never had been. _Emotionally unavailable_ had been the general consensus, even if Sara was the only one who ever had the guts to utter those precise words to his face. Once, a friend of his had described him as _an old soul with a young heart_. And she hadn't even needed to possess that advance degree in psychology of hers for him to know she was probably right.

But that morning he had no trouble identifying the feelings of warm contentment coursing through him. It was happiness, plain and simple. Precisely quantifying said emotions, however, was a bit more difficult.

_The happiest day of my life_, that was how he'd heard so many people refer to their wedding day and with such predictable regularity, how could it not come off as some trite, meaningless cliché?

But he had been happy then. Profoundly and gratefully happy.

Yet somehow, in some way he didn't possess the words to articulate, he found himself even happier this morning after, just standing there watching his wife - how both strange and yet comfortable it was to regard her that way - sleep.

_Happy._ Once, and for once in his own words, without any mediating quotations, he'd told Sara she made him happy. Although on the way to inspect a dead man's trailer in the middle of a brothel probably hadn't been the most romantic choice of places to have done so. It was something he should have made sure to tell her more often. It was the truth. Even then. Everyday.

Their relationship hadn't been perfect. For far too long it had been anything but, but that didn't keep her from being the one person who made him happy in ways no one and nothing else ever had. And these days and weeks ever since he'd left Vegas to come find her, be with her, they had been joyous in ways he could never have hoped or imagined.

Maybe he shouldn't have been so surprised. Even Hamlet, consummate cynic, professional pessimist and procrastinator as he was, recognized there were more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in anyone's philosophy.

All Grissom knew was that that numb deadness which had plagued him during all their months apart, had vanished and he felt alive, truly and utterly alive, again with her.

His coming, he knew, had been the start of something, the start of a new life; the ceremony the night before, a promise that it would be a life lived together.

Perhaps that was why that morning more than any other, seemed ripe with untold and undreamt of possibilities.

Fleetingly, Grissom wondered what Sara was dreaming of now, fast asleep as she still was.

It seemed such a shame to wake her. Even if he did come bearing breakfast. Besides, it wasn't the first time the pancakes had gotten cold by the time they'd finally gotten around to them. He'd let her sleep, at least for a little longer.

Which meant he probably should retreat to the sofa. Except he couldn't quite resist the lure of being near her. Even if he'd spent the better part of half a decade denying the truth of it, the attraction had always been palpable between them.

_An immovable object encountering an irresistible force indeed. _

He should have known the two states couldn't coexist. It was, after all, basic physics. And you couldn't fight physics.

That morning he wasn't about to try.

If there had been any room left for him, he would have seriously considered returning to bed. Instead, he settled for sinking as softly as he could onto the thin sliver of mattress remaining.

Nearer as he was now, he noticed one lone orange blossom, having survived the previous night's passion, lay still nestled in one of her curls. With all the careful precision of a man used to extracting miniscule particles of evidence without disturbing the whole, he retrieved the tiny floret. Rubbed between his thumb and forefinger, it released that same sweet, almost intoxicating redolence the air had been so full of the night before. He closed his eyes, the better to focus on the scent and the sentiment which had prompted him to choose the flowers in the first place.

Victorian bridal traditions hadn't really been the reason. It was more the memory of the question an old Tico whom Grissom had encountered on his bus ride on his way to camp had asked him of Sara: ¿_Ella es usted media naranja? Is she the other half of your orange? _The Costa Rican equivalent he was soon to learn of_ Is she your other half?_ Grissom hadn't really thought about it in those terms until then, but Sara was. Sara who was still sleeping so soundly beside him.

But he couldn't resist the temptation any longer.

There was, he thought as one hand naturally settled in the small of her back as he bent to press a kiss into her hair, just something about the feel of her beneath his fingertips: undeniably warm and alive.

The character of her breathing changed at this; began to lose its deep, even constancy. When his mouth moved from her hair to her shoulder, he was rewarded with a sharp inhale. The soft trace of his hand along her spine inspired a sigh.

It was that sigh which undid the very last of his good intentions. To hell with them anyway. What - where - had all his ones for Sara gotten him anyway? Only heartbreak and misery.

He placed a lingering kiss in between her shoulder blades before his lips set to follow the route his hand had so recently taken.

Then there was the hum, more purr, at the back of her throat; the rustle of sheets accompanying the start of a stretch. By the time he made his way back up to nuzzle that spot just beneath her ear, he was greeted not with one of their usually fairly chaste good morning kisses but one full on the mouth and fervent.

Her eyes fluttered open with a still dozy satiated sort of sleepiness so unlike her habitually instantly alert wakefulness resultant from too many years of too many early call-ins.

She yawned. "How late is it?"

Not wearing a watch, Grissom estimated. "After eight."

"_That _late," Sara laughed, heavy on the sarcasm.

"I actually hadn't intended to wake you."

While her expression said _Yeah right_, she replied, "I think you're forgiven in this case."

In truth, Sara couldn't have imagined a more wonderful way to be woken. Of course this didn't keep her from teasing, "Although I wouldn't be so tired if someone hadn't kept me up for half the night."

"Complaining?"

"Not complaining. Merely an observation."

But her nose did wrinkle when he drew her closer for another kiss. She snuffled sharply. "You smell -"

Affronted, Grissom cut in with a choked, "Excuse me?"

"Not like _that_. I mean you smell different," she said. And he did. Not of sweat or musk or lovemaking. Nor of soap or shampoo. If she had to characterize it: "Sweet. Fruity. Like -"

"Breakfast?" he supplied, rising. When Sara appeared about to do the same, he insisted, "No, don't get up."

To her almost coy, "This mean you aren't in any hurry for me to get out of bed?" Grissom only gave her a grin that would put the Cheshire Cat to shame before replying, "No, I've just been wanting to do this for a long time -"

"What?" she asked, watching him retreat to the cabin's small dining table.

"Bring you breakfast in bed," he replied, carting the tray back with him. There was both satisfaction and a touch of exasperation to his "_Finally._ Only took almost five years and marriage for me to manage it."

For it had never failed. They'd get called in early. Her nightmares or her insomnia meant Sara was up and out of bed before him. Or if he'd managed to be up and about before her, she would wake and wander into the kitchen just as he was finishing cooking.

"Your dogged persistence is -"

"Admirable?" he suggested, setting the tray down on the bedside table.

"Appreciated. Much."

And the kiss she next gave him left no doubt to just how much.

"I hope you're hungry," he said.

At how her stomach chose that moment to take the liberty of answering for her with an unmistakably loud and insistent gurgle, they both laughed.

"Obviously."

She scooted over and he sat beside her.

With a conjurer's well-practiced flourish and flair, Grissom whisked the cover off a plate piled high with -

"_Pancakes,"_ Sara beamed.

"Not exactly like the ones back home. I had to improvise a little."

"I can see that."

For upon closer inspection, she observed that these particular pancakes were studded with thick circlets of bananas, ones she knew were likely to have been picked fresh ripe from the tree.

"Honey?"

"Hmm?" she asked, her grin growing, rather partial as she was to his use of that particular endearment.

"_Honey_," Grissom repeated, extending a small bottle before proceeding to lightly drizzle some atop the pancakes, saying, "Syrup's a little hard to come by out here," by way of explanation.

It all looking and smelling absolutely divine, Sara was about to dig in and heartily, too, except the presence of food had finally roused Hank. The boxer had lumbered up to the bed and was currently giving the two of them one of his plaintive, baleful looks of the sort which could neither be ignored nor denied.

"I'd better -" Grissom began, resignedly. Sara fought not to smile back her agreement. Some things never changed. Hank always had the worst sense of timing. Grissom gave a whistle; the dog followed him out on to the porch to be fed.

By the time he returned, Sara had managed to make a sizable dent to her stack of pancakes, causing him to observe, "You were hungry," as he helped himself to several chunks of mango and papaya from the accompanying bowl of cut fruit.

"Also your fault," she insisted.

A momentary flash of smugness flickered across his face. Sara, thinking it was well merited in this case, decided not to call her husband out on this particular show of self-satisfaction.

So for the next couple of minutes, they ate, Sara making approving noises and free with her praise. She'd never had banana pancakes or pancakes with honey before, but the combination proved unsurprisingly delicious.

But after a while, she realized Grissom had stopped eating and was instead eying her intently.

"What? Have I got something-?" she asked, wiping her face, thinking perhaps she'd managed to make a mess of herself.

But suddenly she realized when and where she'd seen that look before. He was staring at her now much the same as he had the night before when she had begun her descent of the short flight of stairs to their cabin. It was that same look of wide-eyed open awe and unabashed appreciation.

That morning, his feelings, all those things he so much wanted to say, but so seldom had the courage to tell her, completely bypassed his head on their way from his heart to his mouth and he murmured, "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Sara gaped at him. As honest and out of the blue as they frequently proved to be, she never got used to his compliments.

"You are," he maintained.

She doubted it. Not her husband's veracity, as Grissom didn't stoop to petty, false flattery, at least he never had with her, but rather his objectivity. Last night, his admiration had perhaps been understandable. Even his murmurs as they'd kissed and made love. But this morning? Not with sleep still in her eyes and her hair the mess she knew it had to be.

She attempted to cover her sense of disbelief with a half laugh of "You keep saying that, but will you still when I'm old and grey?"

His matter of fact _No_ caught her by surprise. But not half as much as his next assertion of "You will be even more beautiful then."

As there was no possibility of a reply to this, she simply kissed him. Well, not so simply. And while he may have been momentarily taken aback, Grissom quickly and thoroughly surrendered. For that morning she tasted of honey, hope, happiness and home.

The rest of breakfast and the day could wait.

Besides, it was, after all, their honeymoon.


End file.
